


Three-Pipe Problems

by sans_patronymic



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: F/F, Ficlet Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-03-13 15:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13573086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: A collection of three-sentence fics based on prompts.





	1. Learning

**Author's Note:**

> Dragging myself out of writer's block kicking and screaming. 
> 
> Taking all submissions: [send me a prompt](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/post/170456451995/this-looks-fun) and I'll write three sentences. You may use my [tumblr ask,](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/ask) or leave a comment below!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [rachelindeed](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/post/170415846425/cheers-for-the-three-sentence-meme-may-i) suggested: Mycroft & Holmes, learning.

Some boys have aquaria, or keep toads in boxes, I had Sherlock. How amusing, how enthralling to watch him learn first how to hold a spoon, then how to decline Latin, and, at last, that he was much more clever than the rest of them. While I have always enjoyed watching him learn, I never supposed he had anything to teach me; nevertheless, watching them now, together, I am learning what it means to love.


	2. The Auto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [sanguinity](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/post/170431820710/is-it-bad-to-throw-your-own-prompt-back-at-you) suggested: fem!Holmes/fem!Watson, cars.

Shirley grips the wheel with purpose as the auto screams around the bend, upsetting the roadside sign declaring the number of miles they’ll have to walk back to town if the motor dies.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” cries Jane, one hand atop her hat to keep it from flying away, the other on Shirley’s knee to keep _her_ from doing the same.

“Not in the faintest!” Shirley replies and they erupt into laughter as dips in the road bounce them higher and higher.


	3. Peregrine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [sanguinity](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/post/170477823390/am-i-permitted-another-holmeswatson-peregrine) suggested: Holmes/Watson, peregrine.

In the foothills of the Himalayas, there is an Englishman who lives as a wandering pilgrim. He sits in his lowly hut, writing letters he does not dare send. They always begin the same way: “My dear Watson, please forgive me.”


	4. The Secret Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [the-moon-loves-the-sea](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/post/170478171630/for-the-prompt-meme-holmeswatson-telling) suggested: Holmes/Watson, secrets.

This is the time of night Watson likes best. When the fire in the grate turns to ash and hands and cheeks seek out the cool undersides of pillows. When Holmes takes his hand in the darkness and whispers thoughts which he has never told anyone.


	5. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [monicapelser](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/post/170498725280/are-you-still-doing-the-pairing-and-a-prompt) suggested: Mycroft & Watson, the Diogenes Club.

If there is such a thing as too much silence, it is the Diogenes Club. When I first returned from Afghanistan, I thought peace and quiet were what I needed above all else—a soothing balm for my shaken nerves—but standing in the salon with cloth galoshes to muffle the sound of footsteps against the parquet floor, I long for the cacophonous din of Baker Street. I finish relating to Mycroft the details of his brother’s death and his eyes glisten with such a far away sadness, I am afraid the silence will swallow us whole.


	6. Middle-Class Manner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [paxvictoriana](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/post/170510502930/prompt-1-sherlockjohn-of-course-2-quite) suggested: Holmes/Watson, "quite so... middle class".

Watson could not help but smirk as Lord Ansley bemoaned the ‘middle-class manner of the chap who answered the door’. As his Lordship paced the sitting room, Watson wondered whether or not to tell him that only the week before that ‘middle-class chap’ had had an audience with Her Majesty the Queen. 

Of course, Holmes hadn’t behaved much better then, either…


	7. Rot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Okapi](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/148517814) suggested: Holmes/Watson, an ibis, and a cursed tomb.

MUMMY'S CURSE STRIKES AGAIN: POLICE SEEK LOOT FROM PRINCE'S TOMB AS MYSTERIOUS PLAGUE CLAIMS ANOTHER LIFE.

"Pure rot and nonsense—I told Lestrade last week those deaths were all the 'flu," Holmes declares, tossing aside the paper in favor of his pipe, "That they each possessed Egyptian trinkets is an amusing coincidence, but hardly supernatural."

From the mantlepiece, the eyes of the bronze ibis bore into Watson in their hungry gaze, hotter than the sun in that Damascus market.


	8. St. Sebastian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [sanguinity](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/post/170669427410/holmeswatson-st-sebastian) suggested Holmes/Watson and St. Sebastian.

It was an unholy thing to see him like that, a divine thing. The arch, the tension, the quick intake of air, and then the sigh, barely audible through parted lips, as his arrow hit home. The martyr, devout until his last breath.


	9. The Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Anonymous](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/post/170740196270/holmeswatson-watson-is-a-werewolf) suggested Holmes/Watson; Watson as a werewolf.

Most people suppose that when it happens, he sprouts fur just as a person grows hair, but that isn’t how it is. No, in the cool light of the moon his nails turn to claws and he scratches and scratches until the skin flakes away, leaving only the soft, beautiful fur underneath. Impossible, you will say, but I have seen it for myself; when you have eliminated the man, whatever remains must be the beast.


	10. A Country Skep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanguinity wished to know Holmes's opinion on Bee Skeps.

The modern hive is like a city: inspectable, dissectible, neatly ordered into little rows. On the other hand, a skep is like a country seat: charming to look at, yes, but inaccessible to the outsider. Who knows what horrors lurk inside its cozy coils.


	11. Violets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Okapi suggested flowers (with accompanying article regarding perfume thievery).](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/151432944)

When Watson spotted the Crown Violet bottle left carelessly on the counter the old, schoolboy's habit got the better of him. He left the chemist with the bottle in his pocket and thoughts of love, as the violets warned, squarely on his mind.

Back at Baker Street, Holmes wrinkled up his nose and tsk’d, “They’ll give you thirty days for that, you bouncer.”


	12. Breathless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [@monicapelser](https://tmblr.co/mNky6ENEXgZ90DnVzdz444g) asked for ACD Watson and Mycroft and a medical emergency.

By the time the meal was over, they could already look back and laugh at the ordeal. The innate absurdity of doctor-turned-patient, of Mycroft seizing him around the middle and squeezing until a bit of duck flew across the dinner table, landing, with a plop, in a lake of gravy. Laughter over cigars and brandy; laughter worming through a bruised throat; laughter, purposefully breathless in the face of asphyxiation.


	13. A Midsummer Night's Plea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanguinity asked for Holmes/Watson and "harried sawing."

It was all the intolerable curse of England’s single summer night: the heat, the midges, the sweat, the noise. Holmes pressed a pillow over his ears, then another, then considered one over Watson’s face. As the crickets droned, Holmes begged for deliverance from the harried sawing of his lover’s snores…


	14. Professional Duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [gailbsanders](http://gailbsanders.tumblr.com) requested Holmes/Watson and coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional inspiration from [this classic post.](https://snakeassassins.tumblr.com/post/152272314760/one-thing-thats-always-bothered-me-about-most)

As Holmes’s friend and most intimate companion, I generally endeavor to keep my opinion of his vices to the barest of minimums. Discretion, they say, is the better part of valor. However, valor can carry a man only so far, and when I witness Holmes reach for his Moroccan case after having breakfasted on nothing but two pots of unusually strong coffee, I feel it is my professional duty to intervene.


	15. The Height of Style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [monicapelser](https://tmblr.co/mNky6ENEXgZ90DnVzdz444g) requested Mycroft and nightshirts.

Mycroft Holmes was not a man to be swayed by fashion; he had withstood bowlers and ribbon ties, plaid suits and square shoes all with equal disinterest. Imagine the laundress’s shock, then, when Mr Holmes, having come into possession of a silk pyjama suit, promptly requested all his nightshirts be converted into dust rags.

“We have achieved the height of style, Pamela,” he said, “And it is wearing trousers to bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Send me a prompt (in the comments or via [tumblr](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/ask)) and I'll write three sentences!


	16. Quite a Sting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [paxvictoriana](http://paxvictoriana.tumblr.com/) requested Holmes/Watson and the prompt "you're home early."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Send me a prompt (in the comments or via [tumblr](http://sanspatronymic.tumblr.com/ask)) and I'll write three sentences!

“You’re home early!” Watson cried, his hand still upon the kitchen maid’s thigh. Holmes, without a single word, breezed through the sitting room and shut the door to his bedroom with such force, the pictures on the wall jumped. _Oh dear,_ thought Watson, and turning to the maid he answered, “It’s just a bee sting; you should be right as rain within a week.”


	17. Late-Night Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanguinarysanguinity requested Holmes/Watson and [a lover's telephone.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_can_telephone)

It was a silly idea, thought Watson at first, running a line between their bedrooms–a children’s game. But whenever the nights grew lonely, he was grateful for the rattle of the tin can against the window. Pressed against his ear, the best he could make out was a garbled echo that he knew meant: “I love you.”


	18. Routine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> monicapelser requested Mycroft and 'waking up'.

Mycroft rises at half past six every day, even Sundays. He stretches, washes, dresses, breakfasts (four eggs, two rashers, toast with butter and jam), reads the paper, does this and that, keeping excellent time, like a figure in a German clock. A routine is a comfort and a prison.


	19. Signature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Okapi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/works) requested "signing a document."

Watson had always enjoyed his signature. He liked the way it looked at the bottom of a patient note, across the top of a story sent off to The Strand, on a tender letter to a loved one. But when the time came to sign the affidavit regarding the events at Reichenbach, the black curl of his name across the page was the ugliest thing he had ever seen.


	20. Justified

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Okapi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/works) requested "broken glass".

“I wish you’d get rid of that one,” Watson said, watching from the comfort of his chair as Holmes swirled reagents in the bottom of a broken-necked flask.  
“Why bother when it serves me just fi–ah!”  
He doctored Holmes’s sliced finger in smug silence and kissed it when he was done.


	21. Fraternal Obligation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Sanguinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/) requested Mycroft and 'a fist fight'.

Dr. Watson,

You once inquired, perhaps rhetorically, if I ever cared about my brother’s wellbeing. Let me assure you that any fraternal concern I possessed was quickly dispensed the moment he entered the schoolyard as a boy. Ordinarily, I believe, it is the older sibling who defends the younger against tormentors, but Sherlock had a murderous straight left, even then; I have never since had cause to worry.

Cordially Yours,  
M. Holmes.


	22. Rendezvous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [rachelindeed](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rachelindeed) requested Watson and "waiting impatiently for something."

I am certain that Mycroft has deduced the nature of my relationship with Holmes. Nevertheless, Holmes and I attempt to be discrete with our trysts–can old men really have trysts? Perhaps I should better say _rendezvous_ –if not for Mycroft’s sake, then for propriety’s, or possibly, for our own. I should be lying, if I did not admit there is a certain, youthful thrill to be had waiting behind the summer house on a moonlit evening, listening carefully for the sound of a familiar footfall, or the quiet call of your name from your beloved’s lips…


	23. Climate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Sanguinity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity) requested Victor Trevor and "coming home".

The climate in Terai is so hot, it seems a mockery that the Himalayas are so near, taunting the valley with their snowcapped peaks. In January, when the temperature drops to a balmy seventy-aught degrees, a summer’s day in Norfolk, Victor Trevor’s thoughts return to England. With the aid of some palm wine and _paan_ , he sees once more the oaks, limes, and fens of his ancestral home; smells the chalky damp of the halls; thinks distantly, fondly, of a friend he’d once had… the wisest and best man he’d ever known.


	24. Spiral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Okapi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/profile) requested Watson, Mycroft and "spiral".

On the mantel in the library sits a conch shell trumpet, carved and gilded and largely forgotten.  _How beautiful it is!_  thinks Watson, admiring the spiral top– _how miserable_ , thinks Mycroft,  _to curl in upon oneself to a singularity_. Here, they both smile, if sadly, for they are both correct and they know it.


	25. Percentages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [monicapelser](https://tmblr.co/mNky6ENEXgZ90DnVzdz444g) requested Holmes/Watsob and "67%"

Holmes did not know if his affections were returned, though he suspected as much–approximately a 61% likelihood, if such things could be measured in percentages. Shyly, he stole a glance at Watson beside him in the loge. As the music swelled, Watson reflexively gripped Holmes’s forearm. 67%.


	26. What a Catch!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [apismellifluous](https://apismellifluous.tumblr.com/) requested Holmes, Watson and relaxation.

* * *

“ _Fresh air, sunlight, placid lake,  
nothing to do, but sit and wait_–”  
“You’re right, Watson, fishing  _is_ wretched.”  
“Don’t talk now, Holmes; you seem to have caught something! Reel it in, man–quick!”


	27. Inside Jokes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Tatouine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tatouine/pseuds/Tatouine) requested Lestrade and "cackle".

Inspector Lestrade considered himself an amiable fellow, as game for a joke as any man. But even he could not abide Dr. Watson's smug smile and Mr. Holmes's cackling. _What the devil is so funny?_ he asked himself, _I only mentioned Turkish baths..._


	28. Occupied

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: Watson + "while driving or in/around a car."

Just because we are retired, does not mean we do not keep ourselves busy; Holmes has his bees and I have my motor car. A funny contraption, when you think about it, as full of parts as the human body is full of organs. Though I doubt I shall ever be as good a mechanic as I was a doctor (a very sad fate, indeed, if some of my more exacting patients are to be believed!).


	29. Ombrophobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For @monicapelser who asked for "When it rains/snows/storms" and the Holmes Brothers

It is a difficult thing for an Englishman to hate the rain. Not being terribly fond of the outdoors, I have never been bothered by it, and, indeed, take a small measure of satisfaction in being snug indoors while the rain carries on. Sherlock, on the other hand, can see nothing but the destructive force of the storm, which obliterates foot prints, cigarette ash, and so many measures of sin.


	30. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @paxvictoriana said: “Another three piper! S/J, three months apart.”

On the day Watson arrived in Sussex, Holmes chose not to meet his train. Instead, he left a note with the station master, with directions to his cottage and asking his friend to forgive his absence. 

“Three months is a long time, my dear Watson,” he wrote, “and I do not trust myself to behave like a gentleman.”


	31. Ruse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the-moon-loves-the-sea requested: H/W, cuff links ♥

“Can you help me with this–I’m all thumbs today,” Holmes professed after his fifth unsuccessful attempt to fasten his cuffs. If it was a ruse, Watson didn’t let on that he knew. With surgical precision, he slid the first cufflink in place and smiled as he felt an arm wrap around his waist.


	32. Absconded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> monicapelser asked:  
> "For the pairing and a prompt stories: ACD Lestrade & Mycroft and umbrella, please."

Mr Holmes,

Thank you again for your invaluable help in the Cadogan West affair. I regret to be requesting your aid again so soon, but I was wondering if you could put me in contact with your brother, Mycroft. I have been unable to find him since the case’s conclusion, all of my inquiries at Whitehall have been met with a stone-faced insistence that no such person exists, and I must contact him urgently as it seems he accidentally made off with my umbrella… 

In your debt,  
G. Lestrade


End file.
